Dred Scott v. Sandford

Dred Scott v. Sandford was a landmark decision by the US Supreme Court on US labor law and constitutional law, decided in 1857. It concerned the case of Dred Scott, an enslaved servant who was brought to the free state of Illinois by his owner, a US Army surgeon; Scott claimed that, as an enslaved person who had moved in a free state, he was now free. The suit reached the Supreme Court, and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney decided that blacks did not have the same rights as whites, that his birth in Missouri meant that he was forever a slave, that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, and that states had no rights to abolish slavery (negating the concept of "free states"). The decision was ruled 7-2, and Scott's request was denied. It led to vehement dissent from anti-slavery Northerners, and it served as an indirect catalyst for the American Civil War. The decision was often regarded as the Supreme Court's worst decision.